Skylanders Trap Team lets you catch and play as villains

It always amazes me how Skylanders manages to reinvent itself each year. Now entering its fourth iteration, the series that invented the toys-to-life genre is once again adding a fresh wrinkle and, of course, action figures to its new game.

“How do we push that innovation more?” said Jeff Poffenbarger, Toys for Bob executive producer. “We’re ahead of the field. What if we reverse the magic? What if you can take the digital toy, in the physical world.? We’re going to be bringing life to toys.”

And that’s how Skylanders Trap Team was born. The game once again returns players to Skylands, where Kaos has another a plan to take over the world. He realizes that the reason for his defeats was the lack of powerful allies, so he decides to bust out the inmates from Cloudcracker Prison.

With all these villains running around Skylands, it’s up to the Trap Masters and the Skylanders to recapture them.

Meet Snap Shot, one of the Trap Masters, his weapons are made out of the special material called Traptanium.

HOW THE MAGIC HAPPENS: That’s done with a bit of technological magic and a new type of portal. Players will battle major villains and lesser ones and at certain points, they’ll have to trap them in crystalline objects made up of magical substance called Traptanium. In the real world, the traps look like colored glass in the shape of weapons. In the demo I saw, a Trap Master called Snap Shot battled a familiar foe in Chompy Mage. (He’s a boss that fans fought in Skylanders Giants.) After a series of attacks, he was defeated and players can catch the Chompy Mage by placing a Life elemental trap in the new Traptanium Portal. It’s a bit like Pokemon or if you’re older — Ghostbusters.

The next thing you know the villain appears to be inside the toy “trap.” What’s even better is that players can insert the trap into the portal and play as the villain whenever they want. In fact, it’s advantageous because players can instantly swap out between a villain and Skylander at the touch of a button. That creates a deeper combat system as players can mix up attacks. In one instance, Chill Bill, a foe-turned-ally, can freeze enemies. Immediately afterward, a player can switch out a Skylander Giant and finish the job by smashing the goons. Add in another Skylander for co-op and there’s a dynamic trio of combat possibilities. For example, there are healing villains that can keep both players alive.

Familiar foes like the Chompy Mage will return, but most of villains will be brand new.

TRAPS FOR CERTAIN ELEMENTAL ENEMIES: With eight elements in the Skylanders universe, players will need eight Traptanium Traps to capture all the different enemies in the game. Totaling at more than 40 villains, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to turn your hated rivals to your allies, including, ahem, upper management. In addition, each villain has a full set of moves, elemental traits and their own zones.

So what happens if a player weakens a boss enough for a capture but doesn’t have the right elemental crystal? Poffenbarger says the development team is still debating how to deal with that issue. Eliminating a foe when he’s down is underhanded and goes against the game’s family-value themes. To fix that, he said the team is leaning toward rewarding players with experience and items. The enemies would just turn into prizes.

Another issue that pops up is how do players deal with multiple villains on one trap. Unfortunately, each trap can only hold one villain at a time. Fortunately, the Trap Team has a kind of vault where players can put any of their captured foes. When they want, they can grab one and download it to the trap and take it with them almost as a mini-sidekick to their main Skylander.

The banter between the two baddies in the Shred Naut will make it a must-have in a fight.

WHEN MAKE-BELIEVE SEEMS LIKE REALITY: But what makes this all work is the speaker inside the new portal. As a villain is trapped into the crystal, players can hear the transition from the main screen to the portal. It’s magical and deepens the spell Skylanders casts on players. It’s a clever interplay as a foe like the Shred Naut goes from an enemy spewing out insults to a bantering ally encased in the Traptanium Portal and crystal trap. Some villains even give players hints as they play through a stage. It’s the type of make-believe that’s good enough to seem real.

As with the other titles, Skylanders Trap Team will support toys from all the previous games though there won’t be any content tailored especially for them. Fans can expect about 30 new Skylanders figurines (new core characters and reposed favorites) coming out with this edition. Also, the starter pack will come with the new Traptanium Portal (which isn’t backward compatible), a Water elemental trap, a Life elmental trap, Snap Shot the Trap master and a new Skylander named Food Fight. It will also include the game, which is scheduled for release Oct. 5 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.